Craft:

Makers and Crafters, it's time to enter our 2nd annual ghoulishly fun Halloween contests! Anyone, anywhere, can enter all or just some of the contests. We'll have lots of updates and posts regarding all these, but this announcement is to get you started and planning.

We're calling this year's contests DIY HALLOWEEN. Last year's were so big, with thousands of entries, that we even published our first MAKE: Halloween special edition on newsstands right now!

THE DIY HALLOWEEN CONTESTS!

Entering is easy: just upload your photos to the DIY HALLOWEEN Flickr photo pool and tag them "DIYHALLOWEEN." Or email them to make.magazine@gmail.com, or put them on Instructables in the MAKE group with a tag "DIYHALLOWEEN" -- and we'll upload them to the Flickr pool. Take the best pix you can -- see suggestions below -- basically we want your high-res photos for a future MAKE Halloween issue!

Hack-o'-Lantern contest: Decorate a pumpkin any way you see fit, or unfit. It's that easy. Then upload or email your photos, as described above. We'll also post a roundup of ways to decorate a pumpkin as it gets closer to Halloween.

Costume contest: Dressing up? Making your own costume? As long as you "make" something, you can enter. Any costume with homemade elements on it, in it, or used with it is OK. Take your best photos and upload or email them. We'll continue to post fun costumes and how-tos as well.

Decorations, Haunted house, gadgets, and more contest: Decorations at home, work, wherever, a haunted house, lawn gadgets, anything Halloweeny. If you're one of those makers or crafters who goes all out and makes their surroundings spooky in some way, take a photo! Throughout the contest, we will spotlight some of our favorite Halloween-related projects to inspire folks.

Food contest: The grosser the better. Brain jello molds, meat heads, rat cakes -- we saw some of the grossest food creations last year, let's top them this year!

Trick-or-Treat contest: This is the easiest one, no photos necessary. If you have a blog, a website, or anything online, just post a link to the Halloween section of MAKE. We will pick 20 people we see linking to us. It works best if you have a blog-like site; we'll be using the Technorati service to track who is linking to us and our internal logs. You can post a link to us in your sidebar, a link about this contest, anything, really. Do a post about DIY Halloween, it doesn't matter to us, but we can see it best if it's on a blog, and making it fun always helps (extra credit if it's a spooky story).

Prizes!

Besides the glory and fame of being a winner of the DIY Halloween Contests, we're going to give away some stuff. We're working on the complete list (check back soon) but the grand prize is going to be a trip to Maker Faire San Francisco!

Deadline

Have your entries in before Sunday, Nov. 4, 2007, at 1:59 p.m. EST. We're giving you a little time to take photos and get them up post-Halloween, but you can enter any time, starting now. Contest is open to anyone on planet Earth or surrounding orbit.

Rules

When you enter, you're giving us permission to use the photos in a future MAKE issue. That's pretty much it. The winners will be contacted, so please make it easy to find you (using Flickr or Instructables works great since we can email you through those sites).

Remember you can enter at any time just by tagging your photos on Flickr with "DIYHALLOWEEN" and adding them to the DIY HALLOWEEN photo pool, or by emailing them to us (make.magazine@gmail.com), or by putting them on Instructables in the MAKE group with a tag "DIYHALLOWEEN." To enter the Treat-or-Treat contest, just post about DIY HALLOWEEN or the contest on your blog. And lastly, if you want to use MAKE and/or CRAFT logos in your projects or posts, get 'em here (MAKE logos -- CRAFT logos).

Suggestions

Take good photos, because if you win, your project may appear in a future issue of MAKE! Try to shoot high-res, at least 4 megapixel. (Our photo editor likes at least 300dpi @ 4"x5" or larger.)

Also: It's a great idea to do a how-to; if you show you made something, you're more likely to win. You don't need to, but -- it's a good way to win :)

SO! What are you waiting for? Scare us! Inspire us! Humor us!

* Extra Credit: Halloween events

Know of a great Halloween-related event that MAKE should cover? Tell us about it ASAP at editor@makezine.com, and we'll consider sending a photographer to the event!

And if you attend a great Halloween event this year, please take your camera and send us your good-quality photos, 300dpi @ 4"x5" or larger.